Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Examiner alternative transportation writer...

Where am I ? How did I get here? There are real writers at the Examiner, people who know about past participles, the pluperfect tense, epostulatory corpuscles and the like. I was that kid in English class who kept his head down in the vain hope that the teacher would never call on him.

But how did I get here? This writing journey began about 20 years ago when the editor of an amateur radio newsletter asked if I could contribute some articles. I'm a professional electronics technician, so I was interested in the tech side, but the pieces quickly devolved into comedy. I found a character, earnest but not overly bright, who may not be far removed from my own. It's been a merry downhill run ever since.

That character, of course, is Dr. Wally Crankset. I'm not sure the Examiner is ready for him, but it's awfully hard to keep him out of my posts. Time will tell.

The Examiner offers a chance at a larger audience - not that there's anything wrong with those of you reading CycleDog regularly. The obvious satire and occasional rant would probably go better here, but I haven't read enough of the Examiner pieces to get a feel for their limits yet.

So, I'm not saying goodbye. Not by a long shot. But like any conscientious cyclist, I signal before a change in direction.

My first thought was to post 'serious' bike stuff on the Examiner page, but I can't resist at least trying a bit of snark. Look for it early next week.

They want 3 or 4 posts per week with 200-400 words. I've started re-purposing some of the earliest stuff from here on CycleDog, not using it directly, of course, but doing updates and rewrites. Old stuff is a good source for ideas. I can look at it now and think, "Hmmm, I could have done this a little better!" The urge to tinker with a piece never goes away.